by Cassia Meare
"Do we ever do anything for a simple reason?" he wondered, clasping his hands behind his back.
The garden was a narrow stretch, surrounded by a stone balustrade with carved images bearing his arms and other symbols. He preferred trees to flowers, and they now moved in their shade until they reached the other side, which offered a good view of Highmere and the bay. They stood as if suspended over the city; as if on the edge of the world.
"Don't play, my dear," Ahn said, real concern on her face. "You know what I mean."
"What I know is that you treated me like a creature without sense that needed putting down."
"No, Nemours—"
He turned, forcing her to look at him. "How did you convince Elinor to betray me in my bed?"
Ahn evaded his eyes. "Lies. Horrible lies. And I made her meet Sibulla."
"I see." Cunning. Expedient. And more than a little cruel.
She reached out, touching his arm. "But Nemours, for all our sakes, you must forgive me. We must meet halfway in this."
Azure raised her head to watch, as if finding it strange that Ahn should beg.
"By meeting halfway, I think you mean do what you think is right," Nemours said with no greater warmth.
"You have been playing with fire—" Ahn began.
He raised his eyebrows. "I have?"
Ahn let her hand drop, knowing that she should not accuse him when she was supposed to be apologizing.
"I had Atra Ve Hasis use magic so you'd forget Delian and Ty for a while, and we could go looking for the hekas unhindered. I used magic on Earth." Shrugging out of his doublet, he pulled down his shirt to show the symbols on his upper arm. "Here are the hekas, Ahn, for everyone to see. Where are yours?"
Her dress was short sleeved, and her arms unmarked. She said nothing.
"And yet I just saw them on Lamia's arm. She’s been given Time since I last saw her. I'd probably find the runes on Sefira's." He shrugged into his doublet again and shook his head at her. "You let your sisters be marked but remain pristine. Am I to believe you are considering the good of others?"
"How can you doubt it?" she protested with some indignation.
"I do!"
"You know I studied under Mother," Ahn said passionately. "When she comes back—"
He was in no mood to hear false conclusions. "When she comes back you're the dutiful daughter, finishing her apprenticeship, kneeling in adoration? And your sisters, and that sinister priest you're turning into a mage, are what? The sacrifices?"
"I don't believe Aya would punish them."
"You make me angry when you say things like that," Nemours said quietly.
Pride leapt to her eyes. "And must I always be afraid of your anger, Nemours?"
"Have the grace be ashamed of your motives, if not. Mother's always hovering in the background for you. The madwoman in the cave. The maker who abandoned us and the world, grieving for a tyrant out of lust, and who may never return. You care more about her than about your living sisters?" He cocked his head at her. "And yet you despise a world that was of her creation?"
"That place was never intended!"
"How do you know for certain what she intended?"
Ahn drew herself up to her full height, straightening her shoulders. "You are too much in love with your title, Lord Protector."
"And you with the title you don't yet have."
"Which?"
"Mother. Queen. Aya left two positions vacant, did she not, and you'd like to fill them. You'll tell yourself it's for the greater good and let those around work for you while you keep your hands clean. But at some point, it will be too late to turn back." He took a step forward, and his tone became gentler. "Don't you understand that?"
The sun made her black diamonds flash as she joined her hands as if in prayer to him. "That's what I am trying to warn you about. The hekas were hidden in the shape of a quest. The powers rise in value, and no one will know how to handle some of them. A quest tries the seeker. Torments the seeker. Sometimes destroys the seeker."
"I know all that. But the worlds are ending, Ahn. It doesn’t matter what a quest does if it must be undertaken."
"Don't you see that it's a trick? I studied the arcane arts while you stayed as far from them as possible — I know there is always a high, high price to pay for an important heka like the Key, and even then you don't get exactly what you want."
"I'm still going to try."
Tears rose quickly to her eyes. "And that's the problem, Nemours. I'm expected to let my brother come to a terrible choice? Perhaps to sacrifice himself or another one of us? For what? For shadows? For a world that should never have existed?"
"Don't concern yourself with me," he said curtly. Her treason still bit like frost. It still burned, and that was the truth.
She swallowed hard before she said, "If you won't allow me to care for you, then I shall concern myself with our brothers and sisters, and our world."
"For that, you also need the Key — or how will you cut off Earth?"
Something shifted in Ahn; a look of surrender going over her face, but not surrender to his will. A surrender to her own inner certainties. It was as if she were finally ready to drop caution. "I told your human girl lies, but I told her a truth too, and that is why she believed me. You are arrogant, Nemours. We must bow to you because you were First Created. Who is the tyrant? And who are you treating like creatures without sense?"
"My decision is to not let a whole world die," he said. "And so it’s hard for me to see how that makes me a tyrant."
She stomped a foot. "You’re deciding for everyone in this world. Deciding that the other one matters so much that they should risk their existence."
"I don’t see it as another world, I see it as part of this one."
She threw her hands in the air in exasperation and turned away again, walking to the balustrade to look down on the city. "And you’re bringing mortals into this … They can’t decide any of it. They don’t understand or know enough."
"I wonder if we do."
Clicking her tongue in impatience, she changed tack. "What did you do to convince Stonemount?" Her long fingers tapped the bright stone. "I know Lord Tayne, and he wasn't happy about the affinity you have for the Shadow World."
"Lord Tayne is still a warrior from a dangerous place. A warrior doesn't back down before odds."
"What have you promised him, Nemours?" she insisted.
"Something that doesn't concern you."
"Are you sure about that?"
"He won't change his mind, and that means I have a greater force at my disposal than you, should it come to a conflict."
There was a long silence this time, and she kept her back to him. After a moment, she shook her head sadly.
"You would let our people die, our family get torn apart," she said. "For what end? Do you think a war can stop me?"
"You thought a Binding could stop me."
She gestured toward the city. "What is it they can do to either of us?"
"Give you no shelter." She had slowly turned to him, and he gave her a grim smile. "Then you’ll have to use your magic here, won’t you, to stop me?"
“Ah, I see. You want to force my hand.” Ahn’s eyes shone darker than her diamonds. "And if I did use magic?"
Nemours leaned against the balustrade on the other side, still facing her, and crossed his arms. "Let's have it."
She scoffed. "When you talk like that, I see the boy in you."
"I was never a boy."
"Yes, you were. You were young once, Nemours. You had dreams. Or your reality was the dream, I don’t know which. You would love Sibulla and your sisters and brothers, you would protect Aya’s creation, and life would be good. But then our father and brother challenged you, and you had the same expression on your face as you have now. You had the eyes of a boy who won’t be told what to do, and won’t be beaten."
The silence lasted longer this time.
"Is that what you think happened?" he finally a
sked.
Sudden emotion twisted Ahn’s features until she managed to say, "No. I know it wasn’t like that. But Nemours, admit your faults too. Don’t you think we may have a point?" At his lack of response, she went on, emboldened, "That you may be wrong this time?"
A sudden flight of birds startled her for a moment. Nemours followed them with his eyes, still silent. Then he reminded himself that at times he was harsh, and that people might die because of it. He added, more softly, "You don’t have the majority here, Ahn. The mortals have accepted my argument. But I still believe we both want what is best. We can work together to get the Knowledge. And once we have it and we know the price for the Key, we make our decision. Together."
"I don't know how it is that you conceived such love for those people, Nemours, but I know you, when you love." She nodded several times and sighed. "For a whole night you fought a god with only one arm. You'll never give up, so I shall have to make you."
Azure lifted her head sharply to look at Ahn.
"Make me? That’s a mistake."
"We disagree," she said, shrugging. "I wish both of us luck. If you win, you'll have saved two worlds. If I win, I'll have saved ours."
His eyes still sought hers. "No one will win if we fight each other."
But Azure had moved toward the door and leapt back into his room.
"There, Azure is telling me the conversation is over, unless you are obeyed," Ahn observed with a bitter smile. "I know more about what this quest might mean than you, and I tell you, I cannot give it up." She, too, moved to the door, and there she turned in profile and added, "Whatever happens from now on, Nemours, let it be on your head."
If until then he had been feeling a mixture of disappointment at her and regret that they should disagree, now a sharp jolt of anger went through him. Her parting shot had shown him what he could only despise: Ahn’s inability to concede that she ever did wrong. Her desire to lay blame everywhere and emerge as the moral victor. It was the ugliest thing about her.
No, he could not respect that, he thought as he walked inside and toward the antechamber. He was willing to get to the very last consequences of his actions — and when the price for two worlds were demanded, he would pay it.
Delian and Ty stood in the antechamber alone. Their sisters were gone, and judging by their serious expressions, Ahn had already told them there had been no agreement.
"You need to return to the hekas — to Earth," Nemours told them. "Let's not waste any more time."
His brothers knew when not to ask questions. They knew no good answers would follow, although Ty’s nod was regretful and Delian winced, thinking of what was to come. As they moved, Nemours spoke again.
"One thing — you must not give Elinor the Time heka."
They stopped at the door and exchanged looks.
Nemours added more forcefully, "She has a role in all this."
7
Elinor liked the crunching noise of gravel and dirt under her boots as she walked with her basket.
Much as the news said that the weather was unseasonably warm for March, today she found it hard to believe the world was ending. There were fat-bellied clouds in the sky, but they didn't threaten rain. The flowers had come, and they seemed to nod their heads in greeting as she passed. She had even spied a family of deer spying on her.
For the second time she was going to the market in town. She liked the half-hour walk, and she liked looking at all the market stands in the church square. They were much cleaner and better organized than at her time, and sold so many things that she wondered at them. Things called antiques were advances to her, like a round silver watch with greyhounds engraved on the back and a chain. The vendor showed her how to pull a pin and set the time, and how to wind the device so that it ticked and marked the minutes. He also had a pair of binoculars, a very cunning device she could use to see far away, although when she first looked through it, things approached and moved so quickly her eyes rolled and she swayed until the man steadied her by the arm.
“Careful now,” he laughed.
She bought both, and left listening to the satisfying ticking of her timepiece. She would attempt to use the binoculars later, in the lawn of the house. The man had said people liked to watch birds through them, although Elinor thought that a waste of time; it was more important to watch one’s enemies, or perhaps the customs of modern people from an unseen vantage point.
Now that she had found cooking books, she liked making food. Vendors had looked at her in wild surmise when she asked whether they had swans. It was a delicacy sometimes served at her father’s house, but it had apparently fallen into disuse. All swans belonged to the queen, they claimed, and she could not tell whether they were jesting. Such a decision seemed tyrannical to her, and yet everyone nowadays was always going on about liberty. And the English had become an animal-loving nation, although they did pick and choose among creatures. Cows and chickens, for example, could still be slaughtered wholesale, and fish did not fare much better. There was also seafood, which she had not much known, apart from eating oysters once — but these things smelled bad, and she was no longer used to bad smells. She bought some lamb instead.
Wondrous were the spices, once so expensive if they were to be had at all and now so affordable. She filled her basket with them and enjoyed their aroma as she kept looking through a vast array of fruits and vegetables.
She could not help thinking how droll it would have been to come to this market with Nurse — although when she got over the novelty of it, Nurse would have insulted everyone's wares so as to haggle prices.
When Elinor's basket was full, she sat at a shop where old ladies with clever eyes gave her tea, a meal she had come to love. Very old patrons there told her about the World War, the second one. They had been children then, but still remembered the air raids.
As she left, Elinor glanced at the sky and hoped they would never have to see it cracking or falling on them again. They might, she was told, even live to a whole hundred years, and still enjoy tea and conversation.
The men admired her long spring dress patterned with flowers. She had bought it only the other day and thought it pretty, if somewhat flimsy, but she stared back at a coarse knave staring at her breasts; he shrugged and walked away.
A woman at a stand shook her head and clicked her tongue. "Bloody caveman."
Elinor knew she was talking about what science said were original humans, descended from apes — but she had not yet digested that notion. It seemed like the wildest fancy, although the documentary had made a good case for it. The woman handed her a paper. It said: "21st-Century Woman Week."
"If you're interested," the stranger said, "this month there are a lot of workshops and events around feminist and gender issues. Tonight there will be Richard II at the theater here, with an all-woman cast."
"But what nonsense," cried Elinor. "He was a man."
"It's ... it's like a retelling?" the woman said, as if explaining something to a child.
"I shall not attend," Elinor said, even as she folded the paper and put it in the basket, "since that is an insult to our martyred king. But I shall certainly peruse this calendar for more sensible events. Thank you."
The truth was, Elinor thought as she walked away and found the path back home, that the more she learned, the more there was to learn.
She had come across the sentence, "Be careful what you wish for"; and she did think it a great irony that one might dream of something from the safety of a tower — of books, of feats, of freedom — and then have too much of it all.
The library in that great and now empty house was her delight and her despair at once. The books lined the shelves like sentinels in an army she ought to be able to command, but it was as if they kept their backs to her, hiding mysteries until she could open them and find out what they said.
Yet there were so many.
And then there was the internet, with so much more. Just about anything. She liked books better than the short
bits online, but sometimes a text referred to another and another and another, and she would not have been able to make head or tail of any of it, if it weren't for the google.
And thank heavens for the BBC. It was good to watch things when she got tired of reading. It was good, too, that she had been augmented, as she never got too confused or forgot information, even when she disagreed with it. She hardly ever got tired and could now walk back home swinging her basket full of things.
When she got to the house, however, she again thought how silent it was — and how her friends were not there, but in filthy dungeons. Not forever, as she would not allow it — no matter what the Prince of the Morning dictated. But if only Ty were there to help her study a way to get them back, which was of course a contradiction.
There would be a way.
The only other occupant of the house — apart from ants in the kitchen — was her cat. He was waiting by the door, black tail in the air and green eyes full of expectation. Delian had told her not to keep him as they would travel, but she could not send Kent away. Not yet.
She bent so he could leap up on her shoulder, and after putting the shopping away in the kitchen, she poured him a bowl of creamy milk. It made him happy enough to purr. Then she moved toward the library, allowing the thought to surface again: Nemours had been harsh to her, to Delian and to Ty.
Perhaps it was true that rulers could afford no mercies.
The Prince was one of the first titles that had called her attention just after her banishment a few days before. "It is far safer to be feared than loved," the Florentine, Machiavelli, had written only eighteen years after she had left her time. "And since men love at their own will and fear at the will of the prince, a wise prince must build a foundation on what is his own, and not on what belongs to others."
To give your trust or tenderness to another was to give up yourself. It was to open the door to betrayal when a whole state and the lives of many depended on you. Therefore, tenderness was a terrible thing for princes.
Her father, known for his devotion to his sovereign, would have been deeply ashamed to know that she had betrayed anyone's trust, much less a prince's; although, she thought stubbornly, she had never pledged fealty to Nemours, so could not be said to have committed treason.